Is it a beach buggy or a lunar module? No, it's a secret weapon designed by techies and aimed at winning the Pentagon's million-dollar battle of the robots

The tortoises had nothing to worry about in the end. Out there in the desert somewhere, along with the 80 US marines deployed to guard the route, and the hundreds of sheriffs' deputies, state police, crossing guards, Bureau of Land Management agents and fish and wildlife personnel — not to mention the control cars trailing the robots, and the army helicopters chattering overhead — 20 biologists were creeping through the sage bushes putting temporary pens around every desert tortoise they could find, the tortoise being an officially protected species.

Worthy work, but in this case a waste of time: out of the 15 robots who took on the Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) Grand Challenge, a 142-mile race from Barstow, California, to Primm, Nevada, the farthest any of them got was 7.4 miles, or 5% of the way. On the other hand, you could say they did pretty well, considering that